


it's a revolution, i suppose

by singsongsung



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2010744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was another part of her that discovered something, and it was this: Finn was gone, but Raven was still standing. Raven was still in one piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a revolution, i suppose

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive."

As a little girl - or a little bird, as her community on Mecha station used to call her, playing on her name and her scrawny build, her sharp shoulder blades - Raven desperately wanted her mother’s attention. She was a shadow following around the woman who had given her life, somehow managing not to take it personally when she was pushed aside or told to wait for hours. Her community took care of her: the elders in the living quarters around theirs who missed having their children small and in their vicinity, friends of her mother’s who took pity on the thin little girl with bright, dark eyes, and the Collins family in particular. The parents were always busy, always working, but Mr. Collins would give Raven an occasional pat on the head and Mrs. Collins would sometimes mend her clothes. They cared for her vaguely while she was still small enough and sweet enough, but Finn kept caring even when she developed what her mother called a “sassy tongue” and a penchant for mischief. Finn kept caring forever.

 

He was her first, and truly her only, friend.

 

 

 

 

 

Raven adored Finn as a child, played tricks on him and giggled with him and once tried to cut his hair when she was sure it was getting too long. As their interests diverged, they taught each other things. He always let her share his food, and he sometimes handed down his clothes to her, shirts that she would tie at her midriff and pants that she’d cut off into shorts for sleeping in. They spent every single day together.

 

And as soon as she was old enough for her feelings of adoration to morph into something more serious, they did. She was fifteen when she lost her virginity to Finn and, though he kept up a mumbled, worried stream of words about not wanting to hurt her, all she really felt was whole.

 

 

 

 

 

They were two halves of one piece, Raven and Finn. She excelled in her job and he excelled in his troublemaking, but she knew how their future would turn out. One day, quietly, they’d get married, and then they’d have a child (a girl, she was somehow sure), and she would be brilliant and beautiful and just a little bit spoiled by her father, and she would become the youngest Zero-G mechanic ever, and Raven would not mind, even for a minute, giving up her own claim to fame.

 

But then Finn got caught spacewalking, and Raven abruptly lost her touchstone. For the first time in her memory, she couldn’t see him once a day but once a month. And she missed him fiercely, but it was bearable - she didn’t think about his evaluation on his eighteenth birthday, only about their future life, their future daughter.

 

And then all the juvenile prisoners were sent to the ground, and Raven was left in the sky. And there was a part of her that felt like it was being wrenched apart, that felt like this was all so wrong, existing on the Ark without Finn, and she wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to do it.

 

But there was another part of her that discovered something, and it was this:

 

Finn was gone, but Raven was still standing. Raven was still in one piece.

 

 

 

 

 

She goes to the ground by herself, breathing as deeply as she can, flicking switches with precision. She crashes, but she makes it there, alive.

 

On the ground, she finds Finn, but it’s not just Finn anymore. It’s Finn and all these other kids. It’s Finn and Clarke, Clarke with her pretty blonde hair and her decisive jaw and her eyes flickering toward Finn with every second decision she makes. It’s Finn, and it’s Clarke, and it’s Bellamy.

 

 

 

 

 

Raven does not like Bellamy from their first meeting, when they attack each other, and not just because of his hand on her throat. He thinks too much of himself and he knows too little. He has no redeeming qualities.

 

Except, perhaps, for the stupid freckles on his shoulders and his brash courage and his irritating overprotective streak.

 

 

 

 

 

After she ends things with Finn, Raven fucks Bellamy and endeavours not to regret it. She does not like him, but he got her off, so she figures it must even out.

 

Clarke and Finn fall in love right in front of Raven, though Clarke, all kindness, all fairness, tries to disguise the very obvious truth. In quiet, bitter moments, Raven might even feel sorry for herself, so she seeks out distraction.

 

She makes bombs and bullets. She passes her knowledge on to Jasper. She finds herself studying Bellamy.

 

Loathe as she is to admit it, they are not entirely unalike. She sees much of herself in him, the impulsive nature of his bravery, his dark hair that doesn’t know how to be anything but a mess, all the markings in his face of a child who embraced independence from a very young age, willingly or not. He never admits to doubting himself. His exterior is as rough as it gets, but there is a part of him that really cares about everything, about everyone.

 

Bellamy tells Raven not to leave and she finds herself studying the strength of his shoulders and arms, the strength in his eyes, despite herself.

 

 

 

 

 

She has sex with Bellamy several more times after the first time. They are always rough with each other, hands and mouths leaving bruises on dirty skin, pushing at each other’s bodies, each focused on their own release.

 

But there’s always a moment - when her hands are braced against his chest or he’s hovering over her or his breath is hot on the back of her neck or her spine is pressed against the wall of the drop ship - when they hit just the right rhythm with each other and it becomes less about just coming than it is about coming together, Bellamy’s hands gripping her body like he thinks she might disappear, Raven trying to catch her gasps in her throat and not let them slip out of her mouth.

 

She always leaves first.

 

 

 

 

 

In her stark, white room in the quarantine quarter of Mount Weather, Raven screams for days. She knows nothing but pain, agonizing pain that seems to exist everywhere in her body, but particularly in her legs. She can’t help the animalistic noises that come spilling out of her mouth, can’t help the way her body writhes. She is aware of nothing but waiting for death; it is only later that she realizes everyone in the cells around her must have been burying their heads under their pillows at night.

 

Finally, she awakes from a fitful sleep and finds a cup of dense, clear liquid beside her bed. Deliriously, she drinks it, and when she wakes up again, the change in the pain, the reduction of it, is phenomenal.

 

Still, it takes her several hours to find the strength to go over to her cell’s door and peer out the circular window, gripping the door knob with all her might to help her stay on her feet.

 

To her surprise, across the hall, through an identical circular window, she sees Bellamy’s face, and as she catches his eyes his expression is awash in relief. He bangs on his door; she sees it rather than hears it, and watches his mouth form the words: _are you okay?_

 

With trembling shoulders, Raven offers him a shrug.

 

He has to say his next sentence twice before she can understand all the movements of his mouth; it comes together to form: _you stopped screaming._

 

“Medicine,” she replies, startled by the scratchy, tremulous quality of her voice. She enunciates as best as she can, hoping he’ll understand her. “I think.”

 

Bellamy nods, his gaze moving all over her face, like he’s looking for something he can’t find, and Raven can’t help the tears that suddenly drip from her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. Her hand shakes against the doorknob and she feels like an idiot, crying alone in this room, crying in front of Bellamy, crying in general.

 

His hand smacks against his door again, but this time it’s not aggressive; it’s more like he’s trying to reach her. _You’re okay_ , his mouth tells her. _You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay._

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t learn what happened to everyone else while she was dying in the drop ship until days later, after the adults have found them. They are finally released from their cells by the Mountain Men, though Raven can hardly walk without Finn and Jasper on either side of her, supporting each slow step she takes forward.

 

In another room, which, blissfully, contains colours other than white, Abby Griffin stands next to several other scraped-up survivors from the Ark, and Raven is so relieved to see her that she steps forward just as Clarke steps back, unsure.

 

Abby, of course, goes immediately to her daughter, and Raven tries not to feel that old sting of parental rejection, but she’s so weak and tired that she needs just what Clarke is getting: a mom.

 

She is seated on a bench as everyone greets each other, starts to cry, starts to laugh, starts to demand answers from the masked men surveying them solemnly. Raven watches it all unfold, too exhausted to do anything but stare as Clarke introduces Finn to her mother.  

 

Bellamy comes to sit next to her and doesn’t say a word, just looks around the room with a wary expression on his face. His leg touches hers and he leaves it there, doesn’t move again until Abby comes over with her doctor face on and says, “Oh, Raven, let me see you.”

 

 

 

 

 

They remain imprisoned, but with fewer restrictions. Raven receives more consistent medical treatment, including physical therapy with Abby.

 

“How are we going to get out of here?” she asks, laying flat on her back as Abby lifts her legs into the air.

 

Abby offers her a tired smile. “Do you any ideas?” she asks, almost teasing.

 

Raven shakes her head. “Clarke will,” she says softly. “Bellamy will.”

 

“That’s funny,” Abby says, easing Raven’s leg back down onto the bed. “That’s exactly what they told me about you.”

 

And it is funny, the way Raven almost blushes.

 

 

 

 

 

Half-asleep on a couch in the room that has become their common area, Raven opens her eyes and is surprised to find Bellamy sitting in a nearby chair, studying the floor. She’s sure it’s getting late and she is, as always, tired, but she tries to call upon her dormant sarcasm.

 

“Isn’t there some girl for you to be fucking right now?”

 

Bellamy glances up, surprised, at the sound of her voice, and then half-smiles. “Yeah.” A pause, and then, “But she got shot or something, and I’m pretty sure Clarke’s mom said she’s not up for physical activity.”

 

It startles Raven, to hear him say that, but there’s a part of her that’s still sleepy and a part of her that’s pleased. “Why don’t you try her?” she murmurs.

 

Bellamy squeezes onto the couch next to her, pinning her between his body and the backrest, and Raven hates to be trapped, hates to be caged, but this isn’t that bad. He slips a hand into her shorts, slips fingers inside of her, doesn’t demand a single thing from her. She grinds up against his hand and she can feel, where his mouth is resting against her cheek, that he’s almost smiling again.

 

She closes her eyes. She knows what this is, this kind of sex - she’s had it before, with Finn in a tent at their camp, after he’d been wounded. It is the kind of sex that replaces words. It says, _I need this body. Don’t let this body go._ It is so much easier than saying _I need you._

 

Raven sighs and her back arches and she murmurs, against her own will, “Bellamy,” and then she turns her face to kiss him, hot, desperate kisses punctuated by her gasps as she comes. Bellamy kisses her lips again and then, as she’s catching her breath, kisses her forehead with some kind of ferocity, the press of his mouth against her skin almost hard enough to hurt, and it makes her echo the movement of his mouth from moments ago, an almost-smile.

 

He touches her smile as if to erase it and when she licks her lips, she tastes herself. “You’ve gotta go to bed,” Bellamy says, and she lets him help her walk, at her painfully slow pace, back to her room.

 

 

 

 

 

Bellamy tucks her into her bed with an expression of such seriousness that she cannot laugh at him; it seems like an old habit, probably one from Octavia’s childhood.

 

“We need to get out of here,” she says, exhausted by the white walls.

 

He crouches down next to her bed and nods. “When you’re better,” he says, and she can see the wheels spinning behind his eyes, the formation of a plan beginning.

 

“Okay,” she says softly, holding his gaze for a moment before she gives into the heavy temptation to close her eyes and sleep.

 

The air in the room is still, and she can still hear Bellamy breathing. He does not leave.

 

 

 

 

 

On Earth, Raven is not desperately attached to anyone. She is perfectly whole in herself, or she will be, when she can move indepently again. She is sure of herself, sure of Clarke, sure of Bellamy; sure that the two of them will formulate a plan and let her tweak it however she likes. She is sure of all of them.

  
On Earth, she doesn’t need anyone, really, and yet - it’s nice, somehow, to rub her sharp edges against someone else’s and find the places where there’s some give, the places where they might just fit.

 

 

 

 


End file.
